Psy of “Gangnam Style” attacked Bush’s Iraq War, not America

Korean pop star Psy (Park Jae-sang ) is apologizing for performances in 2004 in which he condemned the Iraq War. At one point he sang another songwriter’s lyrics about US soldiers killing and torturing Iraqis and the need to fight back against them and their family members.

The lyrics were in poor taste, but not anti-American, just anti-war. The incident speaks volumes of how the Bush administration’s warmongering frittered away the good will many in the world had felt for the US. Opinion polls showed that US favorability ratings in Turkey fell from 58% to 9%, and in Indonesia from 75% to 22% in the Bush era, largely because of the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, and the emergence of large numbers of photos showing torture of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib.